The Case of the Dungeon Descent
👑 Investigate the princess's fate
The princess has disappeared in the dungeon! Scry on magical events to deduce what spells were cast when, piece together the stories of multiple adventurers, and uncover the princess’s fate.
💜 Inspired by games like Type Help, The Return of the Obra Dinn, and Her Story.
⏳ Playtime to discover the whole story is 1-2 hours.
🔎 How to play
Explore what happened in the dungeon by scrying on targets and discovering new scenes.
- When you see new heroes, dungeon floors, or the names of spells or magical items, click them to collect scry targets.
- Chose one or more targets and click Scry to search for a scene.
- To unlock the details of a scene, you must find the combination of targets that identify exactly one scene.
- Click the Record Fates button to enter what happened to each hero.
- Your entries are saved as you go. Click the check button on the right to verify each entry.
- Your progress will be automatically saved to browser storage.
✨Reviews
"The format is truly excellent--one of the best formats for an investigation game that I've seen. It definitely captured the "wikiwalking" feel of really feeling like a jackpot when you unlock a new keyword that leads to a bunch of new material."
- Gwen C. Katz, Nightwell Games
"I had a lot of fun with Dungeon Descent. It’s really cute and charming and tells a cool story."
- Robin Ward, The Roottrees Are Dead
📜 Credits
The initial version of the game was made for Ludum Dare 57 for the theme "Depths". This is an updated version.
- Celia: design, writing, code
- Rose: art, code
- Music by Audionautix.com
Development log
- Post-post-jam changelogJul 27, 2025
- A big post-jam update + some of our investigative inspirationsJun 29, 2025
Comments
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that "?" makes me hopeful for a squeal tragic story and a really fun
logic puzzle
Fantastic. I really love the unique UI and the engaging storyline. I would love to volunteer to translate this game into Japanese, if you would allow me to.
Absolutely, I’m open to it! It might take me some time to add a translation into the code, but if you’re happy to provide the translation for free and you think there are players out there who would appreciate it, I’ll take it!
Let’s chat on Bluesky or Discord? I’m celia14.
You really have a talent for writing story-based deduction games. Took me about an hour to beat, but I've seriously enjoyed this adventure. Did not at all go where I thought it would.
really cool!!
This was an enjoyable game! After beating it the first time through, I really wanted to see if there was an efficient way to get to the ending (which I thought would be more involved but it seems like the fates are really only contingent on which locations you've found). I think I got it down pretty low, but I didn't go looking for every combination that was helpful.
Oh my gosh! I never thought I’d see a Dungeon Descent speedrun. I love that you wanted to explore the game this way!
Seeing this, I think I maybe should have made collecting people’s portraits a requirement for solving their fates, but I’ll leave this optimization route intact. 😄
Thanks for this!
Good game, sad to watch one death after another. I like this feeling of spelling out the truth little by little, thank you.
i loved this game!!! can't wait to see more from you :)
This was really cool. Especially once you start figuring out how much is going on in the story, beyond just the basic mechanics.
This was a lot of fun! I enjoyed the parallels between the groups, and the epilogue scene was a lovely end-after-the-end to the story.
reminds me of ‘return of the obra dinn’ mixed with ‘the roottrees are dead’
This was crazy good! OMG! Once you get used to the format it just sucks you right in and you're swept away. Love this.
omg the twists in this were crazyyy (especially the druid's one) its 1:30 am rn and I just finished this instead of doing my german hw lmao but I don't regret it
Wow! Great story but I also have to applaud the gameplay mechanics - Very different than anything I've played before. The scrying was a really neat way to investigate the story and it never felt too hard or too easy. I was worried I'd have to do a lot of randomly combining things, but once you started recognizing details, it really came together!
Wow i had a blast playing this ngl lowky i got stuck a the time
rip zil and luna
I played the game in a way that the first two thirds of the game looked like a linear story and in the last third I got all five ply twists, really great non linear storey telling
P.D I replayed this game shortly after playing DND for the first time, and all the little references to both existing spells and attacks makes it much more enjoyable
WOW!!! The narrative and the arts are simply amazing. I loved how everything connected together so well in the end too. This is a real gem, one of my favorite findings on this website.😭❤️
okey, i jut ended the story and it's just absolute cinema, and the three party's point of view, absolutely love it.
I haven't ended it yet, but i love it
...twist after twist. Damn. I love a perfect time loop; always kinda sad cause you know you can't change it. On top of that, great design/interface! Intuitive gameplay and easy access. Cute icons and font too :3
very satisfying to play through and see the scenes and story develop
I've found all the scenes but still don't know what happened to the knight and mage
Here’s a hint on where to look:
Hint
Clues for that can be found in the scene between the Druid and the Lich.
Truly excellent. Even when I had fully pieced things together without seeing the proper scenes, I still went to confirm because I was so invested. 10/10.
really delightful to play. i loved both the scrying game mechanic and that it's easy to go through the scenes again chronologically to appreciate the story.
awww I love the secret lil ending scene
This game is literally "Return of the Obra Dinn" merged with DnD mechanics. You got every possibilities to understand who they are and what happened to them (there's even options that don't appear). And the only way you can find out isn't by brute-forcing, since there's so much options, but by looking at the details of each scene. And that's how good it is.
Also I loved these twists (didn't expect some of them tbh).
Brilliant
This was such an incredible game! From the mechanics to the story (the plot twists?! ahhh) I loved it so much and had a great time playing
Loved this a lot. The interface isn't perfect, but the way everything comes together felt very satisfying, and I love that there's scenes you don't even need to scry to finish the story. I did get them, though, because I just had to know. I'd love to see more stuff like this, it's exactly the sort of puzzle that's a delight to pry apart.
oh this was absolutely wonderful 🥹🥹 got way too attached to each cast of characters!!!!!! in my heart there's an ending where everyone's happy and lives long wonderful lives. crossing my fingers in hopes of a sequel!!!!
Really fun! I think this is a great evolution of the 'her story' format, and the gameplay was super satisfying.
Fantastic and very fun!
Loved this!
This was very fun!
Really good! It gets the perfect mixture of "investigate on your own but do not feel like you cant find anything new".
Hey I can't get past this tutorial because I can't click on Princess Felicity. Help?
Hmm. I just tried and clicking on her portrait (not her name) in the post-tutorial scene with the king works for me. Is that what you’re trying? I’m not aware of any bugs with it, but maybe try a different browser to see if that makes a difference? Let me know.
I was able to click on her portrait but not her name. Thanks for the help though since I did not see her portrait.
How wonderful! I had a great time with the puzzling and figuring out the story; even guessing some of the twists ahead just made me feel smart and just made it harder when I eventually found the scene that revealed them. Great job on the HerStory-like writing to make each separate scene interesting in various order of discovery. Love the pixel art style also. A lovely little gem!
Needs a gallery of revealed scenes rather than having to scry them again. Her Story had the same problem.
You can always scry on a single target, like a particular person, to see all their scenes! I was hoping that would do the trick rather than adding a new UI element somewhere to show a list of all scenes. But it's good feedback to hear you were missing that, thanks.
I lost my old itch account and forgot the name of this game and aThank GOD it came on my feed asdgsjjaha. I missed this story so much and I'm glad to play it again
I found this game from somebody's list in The Roottrees Discord, it's a well deserved entry into this genre! The framing of finding the scenes as a seer works really well, and I love the filtering mechanic for discovery. Great work!